Enforcement

The decision to restart the ACTA negotiations makes it important to understand the nature and consequence of proposed agreement. Following a complaint about transparency, this note focuses on damages and injunctions.

The negotiating text of ACTA and many other documents, including even the lists of participants in the negotiations, are secret. The White House claims the secrecy is required as a matter of national security. But that does not mean the documents are off limits to everyone outside of the government. Hundreds of advisors, many of them corporate lobbyists, are considered “cleared advisors.” They have access to the ACTA documents.

On January 31, 2009, KEI submitted a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request to USTR for copies of seven documents containing much of the negotiating text of the proposed Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement (ACTA). Today the White House office the United States Trade Representative denied the request, claiming the documents are “information that is properly classified in the interest of national security pursuant to Executive Order 12958.”

Dozens of HIV patients have been placed at risk after the Dutch authorities seized consignments of Indian-made medicines shipped via Schipol airport for distribution to clinics in Nigeria, a multilateral agency yesterday said.

On Tuesday, 20 May 2008, the United Arab Emirates, Nigeria, Ghana, Gambia and Tunisia introduced a draft resolution (A61/A/Conf. Paper No 1) on counterfeiting.

While counterfeiting medicines is an important public health problem, and as traditionally defined, is a criminal enterprise that should be subject to tough legal sanctions, the resolution is problematic.